PS3 Wireless Visual Interface

December 29, 2009 by Mike Szczys 26 Comments

[Technott’s] at it again, this time extending the Playstation 3 with a wireless interface. This handheld isn’t actually a PS3. It provides a wireless connection to your PS3 to receive audio and video, as well as to manage controller data. Think of it as a wirelessly tethered handheld that allows you to play Playstation when your wife is watching the Real Housewives. This is similar in size to his Xbox 360 WVI but the case shape and appearance are a big step up (not that we disliked that one). We’ve embedded a video tour of the device after the break.

Continue reading “PS3 Wireless Visual Interface” →

Composite Video Output From Chumby

December 29, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 4 Comments

[bunnie] posted this pretty slick way of getting composite video out of a Chumby. The Chumby is an open source connectivity device that has already seen some decent hacking. This modification, done by [xobs] isn’t too difficult. It only requires patching into some pads on the motherboard and loading a custom kernel to support the external output.

Reverse Engineering Off-brand Media Players

December 23, 2009 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

[Marcan] picked up this device on the cheap and is working to reverse engineer the controller. This media player is an off-brand Chinese model that can be had for the low-low price of $33.97 with free shipping. That’s worth it just to scavenge the parts for other projects, but the challenge here is to hack the controller because a datasheet was never produced for it. Warm up your logic analyzer, check out the wiki, and you can be pounding away at this ARM926EJ-S based system in no time.

The call to arms comes from [Marcan’s] blog. You may remember him as the guy who is working to solidify iPhone sync in Linux or… what else did he do? Oh yeah, he had this little project called the Wii Homebrew Channel a while ago. Get involved and you can learn from some folks who really know what they’re doing.

[Thanks Mr. Seeker]

How To Root A Nook

December 17, 2009 by Mike Szczys 16 Comments

Here’s the latest in rooted consumer devices, nookdevs.com has rooted the Barnes & Noble Nook eBook reader. The process is extremely easy, as the operating system is stored on a 2GB SD card inside the device. In fact, once you have the case open the hard part is over. From there, the card should be backed up for safe keeping. Now mount the card, enable the Android Debug Bridge and reassemble. The Android SDK can then be used to log into a shell on the Nook wirelessly.

We’re not sure there’s much that can be done past this point yet. It’s up to you to get Doom running!

[techknott]’s Portable Dreamcast

December 16, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 9 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOZvlEOZaCg]

[Sydney] sent in this fantastic portable Dreamcast, built by [techknott], in response to the one we posted yesterday. While we agree, this one is much more polished, we want to point out why the post yesterday is more Hack A Day material. Sure, it looks more “hackish”, but that’s not what we are referring to. What we want to draw your attention to, is the lack of information. Yesterday, there was a build log. Today, there is not. Sure the other one could have had much much more information and we’re not commenting on which one is “better”. We’re just reminding you to please please please document your projects. Oh, and also, this thing is awesome.

Odroid: All The Open, None Of The Contract

December 14, 2009 by Mike Szczys 33 Comments

The Odroid derives its name from the combination of Open and Android. The hardware is aimed at the portable gaming market and runs Android. The specs are amazing, the device is open and begging you to develop for the platform.

The Samsung S5PC100 System-On-A-Chip provides the device with an ARM Cortex-A8 processor running at 833MHz. The usual suspects are all here, a capacitive touchscreen, accelerometer, SDHC slot, and WiFi. What you usually don’t expect to see is a serial debugger and 720p HD output. But the best part, we get all of this without a 2 year contract or the hardware being locked down as we’re used to with and Android based cell phone.

[Thanks Stillbourne via LinuxDevices]

Embedded Games: Rogue

December 12, 2009 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

Here’s a handheld version of Rogue. Rogue is one of the first graphical computer games and takes the player through a dungeon-exploring adventure. [Manuel] built this around a PIC 16F876 microcontroller and a KS0108 graphic LCD screen.

Hot on the heels of the pixellated Mario game, these embedded handhelds make for fun projects and great gifts. There are few parts used and [Manuel] etched his own PCB. Take a look at the schematic, this is a great platform to start with but the sky’s the limit on writing your own games.